Christmas Tree Math

Roll a dice and add that many pom poms to your tree. Use one dice or two or use a 10 sided die.

Let's talk about dice!

There are a lot of different kinds of dice you can use for math games. I mainly use the standard 6 sided dice with dots or a 10 sided die. Depending on what the activity is and what skill I want them to practice, I will use different types. 

•  6 sided with dots are a great way to practice counting and one to one correspondence. (Learning that you count one time for each dot or object in front of you.)
• 10 sided dice with the numbers are a great way to practice recognizing the numbers by sight. For example, I know that my daughter can count objects pretty well, but she has a hard time looking at a number 7 and knowing that means 7. So lately we have been using the 10 sided die more often to help her practice that. 

Either way, both are great math tools and are worth having around to practice numbers!  

Thank you to Kids Matter for the fun Christmas math idea!

Rick Rack Christmas Tree

 Here's a fun project that we did last year as a gift for our parents. I didn't post it before Christmas because I didn't want to ruin the surprise. 

 

Click here for complete instructions.  

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

We have been having a lot of fun using our fly swat activity lately. 

 

Since we are working on the letter F and we've been swatting flies all over the place, I've been thinking a lot about the song There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. So, we made our own old lady who swallowed a fly. 

This activity is an oldie, but a goodie. A baggie is attached to the back of the Old Lady cut out so that you can have her "eat" the animals by putting them into the baggie. Her stomach is cut out so that you can see what she's eaten. It's great to help remember the song and to help with the math skill sequencing. I'm sorry that I don't know where I got this, but I know there are a lot of these on the web if you just search on Google.

E is for Elephant

An upside down hand print makes a fun and easy elephant art project.Just make a hand print with gray paint, add googly eyes, paper ears, and draw a tail!

 

Napping House Free Printable

 A while ago we did a fun activity with the book, The Napping House. This is seriously one of my favorite books of all time. It has a great rhythm, beautiful pictures, and it's fun! If you want a reminder of what we did, check out the old post here. 

Someone emailed me and asked for a copy of the activity we did and I am happy to put it out there. If you use it and share it, please give us credit. Click here to get the free printable. Enjoy!

When you click on the link, there are a lot of ads on the page. You want to click the small grey download button on the top right corner of the page. You will need to sign in to download the paper. You can sign up for a free 4shared account or use your social media outlet to download. Please leave a message below if you have any problems or questions. 

Turkey Treats

Here's a fun turkey treat that you can use at your classroom or at home this Thanksgiving.

Here's What You Need:

• 2 oreo cookies
• large sprinkles or frosting
• frosting
• circus peanut candy (I found mine on the bottom shelf in the candy isle at Walmart)
• candy corn

Here's What You Do:

1. Stick candy corns in between one oreo cookie to make feathers.
2. Put a dab of frosting on the front of the circus peanut and add a candy corn for a beak.
3. Add eyes above the beak with frosting or sprinkles
4. Put a dab of frosting on the back of the circus peanut and stick it to the oreo with feathers.
5. Twist apart the other oreo and stick the turkey into the frosting to make it stand up.

Alphabet Fly Swat

I don't know about you, but I hate flies. We live near a cow farm so flies are an inevitable part of our existence. Of course, since we have kids that love to play outside and often forget to close the door, flies are sometimes found flying around the house. My kids love it because I pay them 5 cents for every fly they kill. Plus, there is something satisfying about swatting something with a fly swatter. 

Well, here is a fun way to practice your letters and get that satisfying swat without the annoying flies that actually buzz around. These fake flies are just the trick. 

Put the alphabet fly pictures up on a wall or on the floor and call out the letter name or the letter sound. When the kids find the correct fly, they swat it with a fly swatter. Use as few or as many of the fly letters as you need to practice.  Pretty easy and pretty fun! 

Click here to get a free printable of the alphabet flies. 

D is for Dumping

 What little kid doesn't love to dump their box of toys onto the floor? And what mom isn't driven crazy by this behavior because I know I sure am! Here is an activity that will keep your kids busy for hours that allows them to dump their toys to their hearts content without driving you up the wall in the process.

Hang a sand bucket from the ceiling on a string or yarn. Under it, put a box full of toys. Make sure to add lots of toys that start with the letter d like: dolphin, dog, dice, domino, dragon, dinosaur, dragonfly, etc. Have your child find all the things that start with a letter d and put them in the bucket.

When they have found them all, dump it out and start over again. After you have found all the letter d toys a couple of times, you can do other searches like all the land animals or all the nonliving things or all the things that are blue, etc. At the end, just let your child fill and dump to their hearts content with what ever toys they want.

D is for Dots

 

We painted dots using things we found around the house - q-tips, pencil eraser, bottle caps, etc. We also read a great book called Lots of Dots. 

Danny and the Dinosaur Hats

 Danny and the dinosaur is a classic book that never goes out of style! We made some brontosaurus hats to go with our Danny and the Dinosaur book reading.

Here's What You Need:

• 2 green constuction paper cut 6" tall
• 1 yellow construction paper 
• Googly eyes
• glue

Here's What You Do:

1. Draw the dinosaur legs, head and tail on the yellow construction paper. The legs were about 4 1/2" tall and the bottom was about 3" across. The head was about 10" long and the tail was about 9" long. I drew it like this:                                                                
2. Glue together 3 of the green papers that are 6" tall to make a tall headband. Fit it around your child's head and cut any extra length off. 
3. Have the kids cut out the pieces. On the head, glue two googly eyes and a mouth.
4. Glue the head on the inside of the band on the middle so that the head curls up and over the child's head. glue the feet on each side and the tail in the back. 
5. Glue the green paper together to make a headband.  

Letter D Songs

Here are some fun letter d activities involving music and movement.

Freeze Dance  - D is for Dance!
You can dance in many different ways, with many different things to celebrate the letter D. We like to freeze dance. We use The Freeze song by Greg and Steve, but you don't need this song to freeze dance. Just turn on your favorite tunes, pick someone to be a DJ and dance until the music stops then freeze! Start dancing when the music starts again.


"We are the Dinosaurs"
By: Laurie Berkner Band   

"Dinosaur Song"

(Sung to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It)
There are dinosaurs stomping all around.
There are dinosaurs stomping all around.
There are dinosaurs around, they are stomping all around.
There are dinosaurs stomping all around.

*You can replace stomping with other words like flying, swimming, roaring, etc.

5 Little Ducks
 

5 little ducks went out to play

Over the hills and far away

When mommy duck said, "Quack, quack, quack."

4 Little Ducks came waddling back

(Repeat, taking away one duck each time until you get to no little ducks . . .)

. . .When mommy duck said, "Quack, quack, quack."

No little ducks came waddling back.

But when daddy duck said, "QUACK, QUACK, QUACK!"

5 little ducks came waddling back.

Halloween Ideas

I'm baaack. Life sure is crazy with another little one needing love and attention, but we are starting to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully, as things smooth out, I will be able to post regularly again. I'm finding the hardest thing is that as Anya and I do preschool together, half the time I am holding a baby. That makes taking pictures a little more complicated! Anyway, here are some Halloween fun activities and songs we have been doing the last couple of days:

The Skeleton Dance - This is awesome because it is catchy and fun. It is also great because the moves are mirrored so the kids are moving in the right direction. I just wish I would have had it when we studied bones recently.

 

The Improved Frankenstein - Last year we did this fun Frankenstein, but it kind of looked Shrek-ish. You can see the instructions and picture  here. 

So, we changed the golf tees and screwed in some screws instead.  Once I got the screw started, it was easy for her to keep going. I like it much better! 

 

Of course we had to read our favorite monster story to go with it:

Candy Corn Mosaic -  I have seen this idea on a couple of different websites.  Here is our version. 

 

To begin we looked at, tasted, and talked about candy corn. We talked about color and shape, but I really wanted to focus on the words - top, middle, and bottom. This activity is great for color sorting, scissors practice and practicing vocab: top, middle, and bottom. We started with strips of white, orange, and yellow.  Then cut those strips into squares. We put the white on top, the orange in the middle and the yellow on bottom. Pretty easy, but a lot of fun!

Update

 I know I don't talk about my family a lot on this website, but I thought I would post a little update. We are getting ready to have another little one join our family and we are so excited that it is a boy! Pregnancy and I don't get a long very well so this will probably be my last post until after the baby is born. I am due next week and I will be taking a little break from blogging for a little while. 

But, if you are wanting some ideas of things to do with your little one, check out our archives and you can do some of the activities we've already posted. Have a great couple of weeks!

Alphabet Spoons

 Here's a letter matching activity to practice matching upper and lower case letters. 

Write the upper case letters on white plastic spoons. Write the lower case letters in a different spot on a clear plastic spoon.

Find the match and stack them on top of each other. 

C is for Crayon

 If your house is anything like ours, then you have a lot of crayons floating around. We have both a pencil box and a gallon size bag full of them! On top of that, quite a few of them are broken. This week we are going to do a few crayon related art activities to try to use up our huge supply. 

Here's a simple crayon monogram. We did C because we are Chipman's Corner, but you could also do your child's first initial. This might also be fun to do as a gift for a favorite teacher, just frame it without glass or in a shadow box. 

To make it, draw your letter on a piece of paper to use as a guide. We backed our paper with cardboard to give it extra support since we aren't going to frame it right now. 

Break the crayons to a size that fits your letter. Our letter was on a 12 X 12 paper so we broke our crayons in half. 

To attach the crayons you can use a hot glue gun or tacky glue. If you use tacky glue, put a book on top of the crayons while the glue dries to help it stick to the paper. 

C is for Cupcake

 Anya and I love to make stuff together. She loves helping me with dinner and loves helping me bake. Of course, we especially love making yummy things like cupcakes with sprinkles! 

We read If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.

We talked about directions and following them in order. Sequencing is an important math skill to work on with preschoolers. I printed off some pictures from the internet of the steps for making cupcakes and put them out of order next to the board. (Gather ingredients, mix ingredients, put in cake liners, pour batter, bake, frost.)

Then, Anya put the steps in order and we talked about which was first, second, third, etc. I told her we were going to make cupcakes and she was in charge of telling us what to do. She loved this idea! We washed our hands and got to work. A few times, she checked her step by step list to remember what we needed to do next.

In the end, eating the cupcakes was the most important step!